The Watersplash

CHAPTER VII

Susan walked back from the shop with her postcards and a present of tomatoes for Emmeline. “My own growing,” Mrs. Alexander had told her. “And I don’t know that I ought to say so, but the plants come from Mr. Fullerby. Wonderful successful he have always been with the tomatoes up at the Hall- won all the prizes with them at the Embank Shows. Pity he’s leaving.”

“Oh, is he?”

“Well, you won’t say I said so, but I did hear tell as he was. Seems he and Mr. Arnold don’t rightly get on together. And maybe he won’t be sorry. He’s got his house, and there’ll be the old age pension, and if he wants to do a bit of jobbing work, there’s Miss Blake and Dr. Croft, both of them would be glad enough to have him in by the day. It’s Mr. Arnold will be finding out as he’s made a mistake to my way of thinking. But that’s just between you and me.”

Susan picked up the bag of tomatoes, but Mrs. Alexander had by no means done.

“That William Jackson will be leaving too, Miss Susan-I don’t know whether you’ve heard. Got his notice yesterday, so 1 heard tell. I always did say he’d go too far one day. In the Lamb or over at Embark every night till closing time, and getting to work late in the morning. A dreadful time Annie has with him, poor thing. And what she wanted to take him for, goodness knows. Twenty years she was, with your Aunt Lucy -went to her at fourteen. And then to go and marry a good-for-nothing like William Jackson that was after her savings and the money Miss Lucy left her! Ten years younger than her if he was a day!”

Susan remembered William Jackson very well-one of the under gardeners at the Hall. She remembered him as a boy, red-haired and ferrety-faced. She had never liked him very much. Annie had been a fool to marry him. Aunt Lucy would never have let her do it. She hoped things were not as bad as Mrs. Alexander made out, but when she said so there was a shake of the head.

“Oh, my dear, no! Poor Annie, she’s nothing but a wreck. And stuck away in that lonely cottage on the other side of the splash! No wonder they got it cheap! Downright dangerous going over those stepping-stones after dark or when it rains heavy. There did ought to be a bridge, but look what everything costs these days. Pity it didn’t get seen to when labour was a penny a day back in Queen Elizabeth’s time.”

Susan laughed.

“A penny a day bought as much as a good many shillings do now. It paid the rent of a cottage and fed and clothed a family.”

“And a pity is isn’t like that now!” said Mrs. Alexander.

As Susan went back she wasn’t thinking about the deterioration in the value of money, or about Fullerby, or William Jackson, or even about poor Annie. She had two pictures in her mind, and do what she would, she couldn’t blot them out. In one of them she was standing in the dusty lane between Embank and Greenings with her suit-case at her feet and her hands stretched out to Edward Random. In the other Clarice Dean was doing practically the same thing in the middle of the village street. This picture was a great deal brighter and more distinct than the other. Clarice was a great deal brighter and prettier than the rather shadowy figure of Susan Wayne. She had a humiliated sense of having been outdone. Ridiculous, but there it was. She had felt warm and friendly towards Edward. She had showed it with nothing at all in her mind except that friendly warmth. And then Clarice had to do practically the same thing and do it a great deal better. There had been a sparkle-a glow of colour-

She came into the lodge, and found Emmeline in the back room lying flat on the floor trying to scoop the kitten out from under the tallboy with a dusting-brush, whilst Amina wailed from the kitchen. With every tiny claw the kitten clung to the carpet.

“Perhaps if we took the drawers out-”

“These old things are generally solid right through.” They took out the bottom drawer, which was immensely heavy because it was full of photograph albums. As Susan had feared, the bottom of the tallboy was solid oak, but right in the middle where the heaviest album had been the boards had parted and there was a definite crack. After about half an hour of the most exhausting and exhaustive pressing, poking, and levering with a chisel they had almost reached the point of deciding that there was nothing to be done that way, when the kitten, who had probably begun to feel hungry, came crawling out on its belly like a little black snake, fixed them with a reproachful stare, and yawned in Emmeline’s face.

It was not until the back room had resumed its usual littered appearance, most of the things which Emmeline had intended to throw away having been reprieved, that she said to Susan in quite her ordinary voice,

“ Arnold has been here this morning. He wants to turn me out. But I don’t think we will tell Edward just for the present. I am afraid it would worry him.”